Here’s a breakdown of the key stats from the post, which you can read in full here:
194 million users on PC, up 34m from 2020. 31.1m peak daily active users, 13.2m peak concurrent. 917 games for sale, nearly double from 2020. $840m spent through the store, up 20%. 36% of sales are third-party games; $300m of spending, up 12%. 765 million free copies claimed in 2021 from 89 free games.
That’s some hardy growth, although I’m fairly sure Epic wouldn’t post figures in decline. The rest of the post talks about the features that were added to the store in 2021, including the long-awaited shopping cart, plus achievements, new tools for discovery, and new supported currencies. Finally, there’s talk of what’s to come in 2022. “First up, we’re excited to confirm that weekly Free Games will continue in 2022,” it begins. (This week’s free game is mech battler Daemon X Machina.) Beyond that, there will be “fleshed-out player profiles”, the ability to prioritise and queue game downloads, new community features and a few other bits and bobs. There’s a roadmap on Trello for keeping track. I don’t use the Epic Games Store much, bar when there’s an exclusive that forces me to. Still, I’m glad that it exists and is growing, because I want Steam to have a decent competitor. That feels more important than ever, given GOG is losing money and Battle.net will presumably vanish in the next few years.
